Is Adam Levine The New Calvin Klein? In Short: No

Adam Levine designed some flannel shirts and now he’s essentially Calvin Klein. Basically. More or less.

The president of Shop Your Way Brands, Bernt Ullmann, spoke with Women’s Wear Daily about Levine’s popular line at Kmart, saying that it’s for “that younger, upwardly mobile Kmart customer that wants a cleaned-up lifestyle product that still has a contemporary feel to it.”

I mean no disrespect to affordable, one-stop-shop clothes (as we speak, I’m wearing pleather leggings from the short-lived Miley Cyrus Walmart line and I don’t even care), but this is definitely the first time I’ve seen “Kmart” and “upwardly mobile” in the same sentence. The clothes aren’t ugly, though, and they don’t look cheap. This men’s cardigan is even kind of hot, in a men’s cardigan way.

But you still don’t know about the icing on the “we’re a little bit delusional about Adam Levine’s Kmart Line” cake. Ullmann went on to add, “I think Adam Levine has the ability to be Kmart’s Calvin Klein business.”

Yeah. Yeah, I’m not so sure about that one.

The Huffington Post points out that Levine himself probably doesn’t adore the comparison, since he’s made fun of bougie celebrity nonsense in the past, tweeting, “I also would like to put an official ban on celebrity fragrances. Punishable by death from this point forward.” Do you mean to tell me Adam Levine doesn’t wear Eternity Purple Orchid? That’s not very Calvin Klein.

Some other things that aren’t very Calvin Klein: having a weird slasher sex scene in American Horror Story, having a tattoo of a badass shark on your rib, judging a reality singing competition show. I’m glad young men have the ability to look like their favorite member of Maroon 5 (is he the only member of Maroon 5?), and I’m glad they can afford it. But I get the feeling Levine is a little less the-new-Calvin-Klein and a little more Miley-Cyrus-For-Walmart.